The enormous diversity of Hinduism reflects its long history of more than 3000 years and the hundreds of millions of people who follow Hinduism (Colledge, 1999).
Introduction
The enormous diversity of Hinduism reflects its long history of more than 3000 years and the hundreds of millions of people who follow Hinduism (Colledge, 1999). There is no single right pattern of being a Hindu, as the religious experiences and the traditions people have received are heterogeneous (Killingley, 2003). Thus, one must be open to the diversity and flexibility of Hinduism, and bare in mind that any general statements about Hinduism are subject to exceptions (Killingley, 2003).
Hindus began appearing Britain in significant numbers from 1950s onwards, and a new wave of Hindu immigration came from East Africa due to the 'Africanisation' policies in the 1960s and 1970s (Colledge, 1999). As Hindu communities have established themselves by opening houses of worship within their new host countries, Hinduism has transformed into an international religion with "international notions of space" (Caswell, 1996: 1).
The first generation of immigrants had difficulty of coping with English language and customs; where as the British born generations may find it difficult to retain their sense of Hindu identity (Colledge, 1999). This background provides an interesting setting for research and we took the opportunity to study the only Hindu temple in Glasgow: Hindu Mandir, in order to investigate how Hindu identity and Hindu traditions continue in the British context.
The beautiful building of Hindu Mandir was built in 1857 and it has been a Hindu temple since 1994. It is located in the prestigious West End of Glasgow. Previously the building was also used as a church. 250 - 300 people visit Hindu Mandir every Sunday, when the formal worship, conducted by a priest takes place. However, worshippers come and go at other times making private offerings and prayers. People also celebrate their birthdays, weddings, graduation parties and the major Hindu festivals in the temple. On Monday evenings basic Hinduism is taught in the temple and a Hindu youth group meets there every Wednesday, as well as another club for older people meets in these premises. Thus Hindu Mandir can be seen as an active community centre. Hindu Mandir does not receive any government funding and it is entirely dependent on donations by its members. All the staff in the temple are volunteers. Hindu Mandir has got approximately 260 family members, which makes approximately 700 - 800 individuals. One-year membership costs £ 2 per family. Hindu Mandir has got 13 committee members, of which 7 are women. The committee members are selected through election every four years, and they are responsible for organising the events, which take place in the temple. We received a very warm welcome and gracious hospitality while carrying out our fieldwork in the Hindu Mandir temple.
Michelle Caswell (1996) carried out research within two Hindu temples in New York. She looked at the consequences of class tensions within the American Hindu community. The Geeta temple Ashram is a traditional orange and white marble North Indian building, which was built in 1972. It reflects the wealth of the first wave immigrants (Caswell, 1996). The Hindu temple society has been criticized of putting only wealthy people on Geeta's board of trustees. Williams writes: "Differences in social status...and educational background create tensions in some of the organizations of the Asian-Indian community."(cited in Caswell, 1996:2). The Divya Dham temple was partly built as a response to these class tensions, as the new less affluent immigrants began to establish their own sacred spaces (Caswell, 1996). Divya Dham is located in former electronics factory and its main deity (god): Vaisno Devi, "appeals to people of all castes and walks of life" back in India (Erndl, cited in Caswell, 1996:2). Divya Dham temple "seems to bring the deities ... to working class immigrants in a way that older temples cannot." (Caswell, 1996:2).
We were interested in seeing whether we could discover a trace of similar class tensions within Hindu Mandir, which Caswell reported. However, our main focus was on investigating the issues of identity and belonging, which Hindu Mandir may have to offer for its members. There was four members in our research group: myself: Ann-Mari Pynnonen, Julia Wallace, Jenny Bryans and Anna Beesley. Our project concentrated on the use of space in the Hindu Mandir and we looked at what does the space mean to the people who use it. We observed the form of rituals and symbolism, which are performed in the Hindu Mandir. We were curious about the consequences of having people with various cultural backgrounds using the same worshipping space. Would people find this problematic? Is the feeling or experience of worshipping different in Glasgow than in India? Is Hindu Mandir able to represent India and create a sense of home among the worshippers? We were curious whether people were satisfied with the appearance of the temple and whether the experience of worship would be different if the building was different? We also looked at power relations in terms of gender differences and differences between older and younger people.
Research Methods
Our fieldwork started on the 1st of February 2004 and it was completed by the 22nd of February 2004. During this time we visited the Hindu Mandir Temple on four Sundays, when the public temple worship takes place. Our main research methods were participant observation and interviewing. We also kept a fieldwork diary, took photographs, and we handed out questionnaires to the worshippers. Our group met once a week to discuss our previous findings and to share the collected data. We also planned together some of the content of the interviews and wrote down what kind of questions we were going to ask during the next temple visit. The interviews were recorded by writing the interviewees' responses down.
We engaged in participant-observation by taking part to the Hindu worship. We observed people as they entered the worshipping area and performed puja: services to gods. By imitating other Hindus we also carried out certain puja activities ourselves. We observed how the people interact and use the space during the worship ceremony. When the religious service was completed, we were always invited to join the worshippers to the dining area, where we had lunch together. This was a good opportunity to chat with many Hindus as well as to observe the dynamics of this social aspect of the temple visit.
We had a very limited amount of time after the lunch during which to interview people, and thus we preferred that each member of our group individually interviewed people, as it provided a way to gain more data within a short time period. We also preferred this form of interviewing in terms of establishing a more personal and close contact with the interviewee. The interviews took place in an area designed for socializing, as it was furnished with many armchairs (see appendix 1, picture 7). We tended to approach people who looked available to be interviewed at that time, and many people approached us themselves willing to be interviewed. There were often many interruptions during the interviews, as the interviewees' friends approached them, and sometimes it was difficult to concentrate, because there was a lot of traffic in the socializing area as people were talking to each other and queuing to get lunch or leaving the temple after lunch. All the armchairs were taken by groups of friends chatting to each other, and a very loud hand-dryer was continuously in use, as people washed their hands. However, after a while it always became quieter as there was only a few people left in the temple and at this point the interviewing was much easier.
Our aim was to interview equal amount of men and women in order to avoid a gender bias in our sample, as we were interested in looking at gender related issues. We also tried to include members of all age groups in our sample. However, our sample includes slightly more male interviewees than female ones, as men tended to approach us and be willing to be interviewed more often than women, which is an interesting phenomenon in itself. Unfortunately, young people are also somewhat overrepresented in our sample. Perhaps other students were curious about our study and perhaps we found mutual interest to each other, as we belong to the same age group and have similar life circumstances, which also unintentionally made it easier to approach each other.
The participants enjoyed teaching us about Hinduism in general, although they were often worried about giving us wrong information, even though we were trying to emphasize that we were interested in their personal experiences rather than in finding the accurate ways of being a Hindu. Before the interviews, it was made clear to the people that they have the right to refuse to answer any questions and that they can terminate the interview at any time. They were also ensured anonymity and all the names of the participants used in this project have been changed.
Observations
We interviewed 22 people, of which 13 were men and 9 were women. Most of the interviews lasted approximately 15 - 20 minutes, but some of the interviews were very brief, lasting only few minutes.
The age range of our sample is as follows:
3 men and 1 woman were between 20 to 25 years old.
3 men and 1 woman were between 25 to 30 years old.
man and 3 women were between 30 to 40 years old.
3 men and 2 women were between 40 to 50 years old.
man and 1 woman were between 50 to 60 years old.
2 men and 1 woman were between 60 to 70 years old.
The occupational categories of the people who we interviewed are as follows:
Students: 5 men and 1 woman.
Working class: 1 man and 1 woman.
Academics: 3 men and 1 woman.
Retired: 2men and 1 woman.
4 women were housewives, and the occupational status of 2 men and 1 woman is unknown.
The nationalities of the people who we interviewed are as follows:
7 Indians. Most of the people who we talked to were from North India.
British male and 1 British - Asian woman, who was born in Britain.
2 men were from Sri Lanka.
woman was from Malaysia.
Two committee members: approximately 55 years old Indian woman, who is the vice-president of the committee and one older Indian man were interviewed briefly about the temple itself. I also met a 36 years old Indian Hindu monk on the street while he was selling cd:s. He lives in a temple in Glasgow, and as he told ...
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7 Indians. Most of the people who we talked to were from North India.
British male and 1 British - Asian woman, who was born in Britain.
2 men were from Sri Lanka.
woman was from Malaysia.
Two committee members: approximately 55 years old Indian woman, who is the vice-president of the committee and one older Indian man were interviewed briefly about the temple itself. I also met a 36 years old Indian Hindu monk on the street while he was selling cd:s. He lives in a temple in Glasgow, and as he told me that he is very familiar with Hindu Mandir and knows the priest well, I took the opportunity to interview him for this project.
Questionnaires
We handed out 20 questionnaires to the worshippers, but only one young Indian mother returned the questionnaire back to us. Perhaps the questionnaire was too long, as it had 13 open-ended questions, and perhaps some of the questions could be reframed in a clearer manner. A copy of this questionnaire is attached in appendix 2.
Sunday in the Hindu Mandir Temple
As you first enter the Hindu Mandir Temple, an aroma of spicy Indian food and a sound of chanting and music downstairs always create a warm and welcoming feeling. Even though the lobby has been decorated by flashing lights, and there is a beautiful picture of a deiti on the wall, as well as other pictures, (which have been created by young artists in the Hindu youth club, see appendix 1 pictures 2 & 3), the lobby is a rather bare area, as it only has few chairs and a table on the side, which has brochures on it. There is also a reception office and another office room upstairs.
The entrance to the worshipping area is downstairs and next to the entrance door is a little room for shoes and coats. There is also a small sink, which people use to wash their hands before entering the worshipping area. The worshipping area is a rather large and empty carpeted space. The beautiful carpet is covered with white sheets. People sit on the floor in a lotus position, facing the colourful shrine. Women tend to sit on the right and men on the left side of the room, although this is not always strictly followed. There are chairs against the wall on both sides of the room where older people sit, as it would be tiring for them to sit on the floor.
At the back of the shrine are many beautifully dressed up dolls, which represent the gods. These images are an important part of Hindu religious experience, as they provide a means by which the worshippers can approach deities (gods) and show them respect (Killingley, 2003). "To see the image, especially to receive the glance of the deity's eyes, is a form of contact with his or her grace and power" (Killingley, 2003: 50). There are also many icons of the deities on the walls, which help Hindus to concentrate on praying, or people may have mental images of their favourite deities. When asked about points of particular significance in the worshipping area, Sushila, 32 answered: "Gods - having these idols helps concentrate easily, but if you have God in mind these may not be necessary".
During the four Sundays when we visited the temple, the type of religious service that took place is called arti: the worship of light (Colledge, 1999). Arti ceremony centres around symbols, which represent fire, earth, air, and water and the importance of these elements to Hindus was very evident in the interviews, as they believe that everything is made from these elements (Colledge, 1999). There is a tray of candles in the shrine symbolizing fire and holy water is placed in a container. Services to images are called puja. Puja can take the form of offerings to the gods, such as flowers, which represent earth (Colledge, 1999).
We always arrived early to the temple, in the beginning of the 1,5 hour ceremony. At that point only the elderly women were normally present. At first we felt shy and decided to sit at the back of the room, being as invisible as possible. However, we had a very friendly hosts, as the older women invited us to sit with them in front of the shrine and showed us how to perform one of the most typical posture of worship, a gesture called anjali (Killingley, 2003), in which the person bows with her hands together and the fingers pointing upward. One of the older women was playing bongo drum and the others were taking turns to sing into a microphone. These songs are called bhajans, which express devotion to God, and the songs are sung in Hindi language (Colledge, 1999). One of the women offered 'half seriously' the microphone to us, asking whether we could sing anything at all: "Hare Krishna or anything?" Rather than chanting, we decided to play the instruments, such as tambourine and bells, which the women offered to us.
We were surprised to see that it was a very old woman who sat in the shrine, and that the older women generally seemed to be in charge of the ceremony, as we expected that women would be considered somewhat subordinate to men, and that the priest would be a man. Later on, at the end of the worship when the vice-president of the temple committee announced that the priest is on holiday for two months, apologizing for any inconvenience, and said that they are carrying out the ceremony as well as possible, we realized that the worship we had seen was atypical. We were told later that the 85-years old lady, who sat in the shrine, is the president of the temple committee.
Soon increasingly many people enter the worshipping area, which becomes very crowded. More people keep on coming during the whole time the worship lasts. Families tend to come later, as it may be difficult for children to sit still for a long time. Women and young girls wear beautiful saris, where as men look more casual and modest. However, many women also wear casual Western clothes.
As people enter the room they walk towards the shrine to perform puja. The worshipper often begins puja by doing the gesture of anjali. Some people do another gesture, in which they bend down and place their forehead on the ground. Raju, 26 describes the meaning of this gesture as follows: "God, I am nothing in front of you. I give myself to you." This gesture was sometimes carried out by young girls to the older women, as they placed their forehead at the woman's feet, showing respect. I was surprised when one middle-aged man once did this gesture to an old woman. Women seemed to have much more respect and power than I had expected. In front of the shrine hangs a big bell, which is attached to the roof. Some people, mainly men will ring the bell before carrying out the gestures of worship. When I asked about the meaning of ringing the bell I was told by an older man and also by a young male student that: "Sometimes when you enter the temple from outside, you may feel that you are not ready for the gods. Then you ring the bell to awaken yourself to the gods." Sometimes people bring offerings: food or flowers, which are placed to the shrine. Most of the people put coins on the tray and then each person passes his or hands over the flames and over his or her forehead and hair. One old man told me that "the flame purifies and you absorb energy from the flame." Normally people have coins readily in their hand to be placed on the tray, but one man pulled out his wallet in front of the shrine and took notes out of it, almost as if he wanted to be seen when giving his generous donation to the temple.
The first 50 minutes of the worship always consists of chanting bhajans. It is mainly women who sing to the microphone, but sometimes men sing as well. One time during the worship many women suddenly stood up and swap places with men by going to sit in front on the men's side and many men went to sit on the women's side. When I was trying to reveal any underlying meaning of this changing of places I was told that it happened simply because of technical difficulties, as the microphone was not working and another microphone had a shorter wire.
One young man was always playing the bongo drum, as he was really good at it. Many people play other instruments or clap their hands following the rhythm. Many people also sing along and do dancing gestures while sitting still. Some people sit with their eyes closed, looking very concentrated and emotionally involved, where as some people were quietly chatting with each other or just sitting still and looking around smiling. The atmosphere would shift in wave patterns from very passionate and very loud chanting to softer and calmer stages; from a more sad and quieter sounding bhajans to more mellow or to very happy and cheery sounding ones; from excitement to calmness. One could almost touch the intense feeling of togetherness or belonging during the worship.
Almost every Sunday the fire alarm would also start ringing for 10 or so minutes at some point during the worship. This was always completely ignored by the people, as they simply started to sing and play the instruments louder. It may be the kitchen, where the lunch is prepared, which triggers the fire alarm, and people are very used to it by now.
At the end of the ceremony the vice-president of the temple always announces things that are happening within the temple and the community. Once she also announced a particular family who had donated £ 250 to the temple. The announcements are made both in English and in Hindi. After the announcements it is time for collective pray.
During the collective pray all the people in the temple stand up close to the shrine, doing the gesture of anjali (see appendix 1 picture 6). People are repeating the word santi together, which means peace and tranquillity. This moment seems to be the emotional highlight of the ceremony, which unites all the worshippers as they pray together. A man rings the big bell continuously during the pray. The vice-president moves the arti tray of candles slowly before the images of gods within the shrine and the president of the committee, waves a big brush, which symbolizes air (Colledge, 1999). When the pray is over all the people bend down and place their forehead on the ground.
As people leave the worshipping area, they are given rice pudding, which is placed on their palm. Old man told me that: 'the rice pudding is purified food from the gods. It has holy water in it'. The rice pudding has been offered first to a deity and is then distributed to the worshippers. Normally left over food is polluted by contact with the eater (Killingley, 2003). When food is offered to a deity it is not polluted but charged with the deity's power. This kind of food is called prasada, "which means grace; the same word refers to the favour by which a deity uses his or her power to save a worshipper from evil." (Killingley, 2003: 50). The lunch, which is served after the worship is also prasada and the vice-president, emphasized, "It is a completely different feeling to eat prasada from eating other food". Raju, 26 said 'It is blessed food. It tastes good. It all comes from heart.' Mohanlad, 21 mentioned "God touches you when you eat prasada."
The dining area and the socializing area are extremely busy during the lunchtime. Women tend to socialize with other women and men also tend to form groups of only male friends in it. After one hour, the temple is very quiet again. There is only few people left who are chatting in the armchairs and the volunteers who work in the kitchen. Other temple volunteers clean the other areas of the temple. Many young people also stay behind, as they often emphasize that they come to the temple to meet friends.
Results and analysis
We shall begin to interpret our results by analysing the ritual symbols of Hindu worship in terms of Victor Turner's theory. We will then look at Turner's concept of communitas, followed by an analysis of power relations through looking at pollution behaviour. We will also separately look at issues concerning gender differences. Finally we will discuss the issues of identity and belonging.
Rites of passage.
Victor Turner was strongly influenced by Arnold Van Gennep's (1909) Rites of passage when he developed his analysis of rituals (Deflem, 1991). Turner realized that ritual is not only situated within a process of life changes, but that ritual itself is processual in form (Deflem, 1991). Turner identified the whole sequence of rites of passage within rituals:
. Separation; the treatment to make the subjects sacred.
2. Liminal; a period involving seclusion from everyday existence.
3. Re-aggregation; gradual return to everyday existence.
(Deflem, 1991).
All these 3 stages can be identified within the Hindu worship ritual. The sequence of rites of separation begin at home, as in all the interviews, Hindus told us that they prepare themselves for temple visit by eating vegetarian food and taking a bath to purify themselves. Within the temple Hindus mark their entry to the worshipping area by taking their shoes off. Shoes are polluting, as they carry dirt from the ground. Then Hindus wash their hands. Furthermore, as described earlier, when entering the temple some people ring the big bell to distance themselves from the outside world and to open their consciousness to gods. Similarly the other puja activites serve to make the person sacred. Through chanting and praying people give themselves to God, entering the liminal stage. The lunch and socializing after the worship offers a gradual return to everyday life, which can be seen as rites of re-aggregation.
Turner noted that during the liminal phase all the ritual subjects are treated equally (Deflem, 1991). He introduced the concept of communitas to describe this feeling of comradeship (Deflem, 1991). Communitas can be defined in opposition to structure (Deflem, 1991). In trying to establish the notion of communitas within Hindu Mandir, we asked people whether they felt that everyone was equal within the temple, and if so, would this feeling of sameness change outside the temple?
Salim, 62 answered to me: "There are differences in people outside the temple but this does not apply inside the temple. Although this is only ideal but in reality it does not work that way. People pay a lot of attention to how other people are dressed and the type of jewellery they wear: for example, if some woman is wearing a beautiful sari. It is about status." Pramod, 78 said: "Many people here are asylum seekers, others are students, but you don't see them as asylum seekers or students. We are all equal. Outside the temple there are differences in status, but inside this does not apply." Pramod, 44 replied to me:" Some people think that we are equal but not everyone does. The caste system still exists to some extent. I believe it is a person's sense of inferiority that makes them look down on other people." Many people answered that everyone is equal without a hesitation, and one young woman said that one of the reasons why she comes to the temple is because "it is a place where all are equal." However, Gujarati, 38 said: "there is grouping of people according to class. Unfortunately, the caste system is still in place, because it is a tradition. There is also a difference between young and old people." A retired Indian woman said: "People are not equal. Here is the same caste system like in India. The people with money are at the top. There are some people in management who are not educated but very rich."
Even though these answers are mixed in terms of the concept of communitas, there is a clear underlying pattern of changing social attitudes in the responses towards valuing a more egalitarian mode of thinking. Turner argued that communitas creates responses to the negative aspects of social structure, such as alienation and divisiveness (Turner, 1974; cited in Barrie, 2003). During ritual, when egalitarian exchanges between people take place, status positions become threatened, as they are undermined, and according to Turner this can create social change (Turner, 1974; cited in Barrie, 2003). Ritual reinforces communitarian values which hold people together and people take this sense of community with them to their everyday lives (Turner, 1974; cited in Barrie, 2003). Nevertheless, many of these responses suggest that similar status and class tensions, which Caswell (1996) reported in America, also exist within Hindu Mandir.
Purity and pollution.
All the Hindus emphasized the importance of cleanliness when visiting a temple. It was also often said that performing puja is purifying. I was curious whether taking a bath and the other purifying rituals, make the person feel both physically and mentally purified, or whether it is just a physical sense of cleanliness. Raju, 26 answered to me: " It is more a physical thing. I want to be clean when I come to the temple and then I achieve mental purification within the temple.... although actually I do try to abandon all negative thoughts before coming here." Mary Douglas writes: " The whole repertoire of ideas concerning pollution and purification are used to mark...the power of ritual to remake a man" (1966: 117). There does seem to be a sense of renewal after worship, as Salim, 62 said "I feel happy and elevated after worship." Raju, 26 says, "worship helps me to have feelings and thoughts, which I would like to have with me all the time."
Hindus feet are in constant exposure to pollution from the ground, but they are careful to guard their heads from pollution (Killingley, 2003). To touch someone's feet, or to place one's head to someone's feet and then touch one's own forehead is a gesture, which is done to deities or to highly respected people (Killingley, 2003). It is a way of saying that the other person is above you and that "what is impure to them is pure to you" (Killingley, 2003:50).
"Purity rules are symbols, a cultural language that expresses and reflects larger social concerns that work in concert with other structures of thought to deliver and support a common message" (Love, 2002: 6). Love continues: "The human body is a center where purity issues are manifest...a microcosm of the social body" (2002: 6). Mary Douglas argues that purity systems are about maintaining category boundaries (1966).
There seem to be two contrasting forces in action during Hindu worship. On one hand, we have looked at communitas, but on the other hand clear status differences are apparent, particularly between older and younger people, which are maintained and expressed through pollution behaviours. "What is clean in relation to one thing may be unclean in relation to another." (Douglas, 1966: 19)."Behaviour that usually results in pollution is sometimes intentional in order to show deference and respect."(Douglas, 1966: 19). This was evident in the way the young girls exposed their forehead to the polluting feet of the older women in the worshipping area in order to show them respect, and in the way people seek refuge from gods by placing their forehead on the ground. Moreover, we now realize that behaviour towards respected persons is similar to behaviour towards a deity (Killingley, 2003). As previously described, left over food is not considered polluting when it is first offered to a deity but it is charged with the deity's power. Similarly, one may receive the left over food of a respected person, which instead of being polluted is also a vehicle of power and a mark of self-abasement (Killingley, 2003). "There is no clear dividing line between deities and people; they are all part of the hierarchy of beings from Brahma to grass" (Killingley, 2003: 50).
Gender
Generally, dharma means righteousness, law and eternal order (Colledge, 1999). To keep dharmic rules means to avoid sin and to acquire merit and having good rebirth (Colledge, 1999). According to the dharma literature only men can receive sacred initiation, where as " Marriage is the Vedic initiation for women; serving the husband is their residence with the teacher; household duties are their worship in the fire." (Manu 2.67: cited in Killingley, 2003). The dharma books also restrict the social life of women by stating that women should never do anything independently, or be independent from men (Manu 5.147-8, cited in Killingley, 2003). Therefore we were surprised to see women in charge of the Hindu Mandir. However, women have a busy ritual life of their own, as it is often women who conduct worship at home and who go to the temple, as these forms of worship are outside the dharma rules (Killingley, 2003). Indeed, many women are very actively involved within Hindu Mandir, and an old man, who is a member of the committee, told me "we believe in ladies in this temple. Our president of the committee is 85-years old woman. We wanted a mature woman in that position, because people would respect her."
Furthermore, the temple is women's stage, as it is women who make an effort by dressing up in beautiful saris before coming to the temple, where as men look very modest. Wearing saris is another way for women to keep a link with their own culture. Nanda, 43 says: "I always wear traditional dress on a Sunday. Women should always make an effort when in company of many Asians." Uma, 21 says: "I do dress up to come to the temple, because I do not want to feel out of place." She also tells me that "I look around to see what other women wear, but not in a bad way." Therefore, in some real sense, Hindu Mandir is a space where women can display the socio-economic status of their families, as the clothes the women wear are "symbolic expressions...of human status" (Geertz, 1972: 419, cited in Annie, 2003). Moreover, women may dress up to pretend that their family is wealthier than it really is, and thus Hindu Mandir "allows people to unite for a common social practice of displaying clothing and other status symbols in order to serve a shared social need of identifying with and belonging to a specific class." (Annie, 2003: 1).
Many women who we talked to were housewives and thus it seems that the most important role of a woman is that of wife and mother. It also seemed that women do have power within the family. Manoj, 48 said to me that the only reason why he comes to the temple is "because my wife tragges me here. I just wait for her command on a Sunday." We only saw one British person in the temple: Arron, 26 who is married to an Indian woman. They met while working in the same company. Arron told me that he only comes to the temple because of his wife. He said: "these rituals do not really have a meaning to me. I just go along with my wife out of respect. It is like a duty to me."
When we asked people why women and men sit on different sides within the worshipping area, the most common response was that it is just a tradition, which is not really significant anymore. However, Raju, 26 said: "There are separate schools and separate toilets for boys and girls. The opposite sexes keep distance from each other." Raju also said that he tries to abandon negative thoughts before coming to the temple. I asked him what kinds of thoughts are negative? "Well...you know." Raju looked slightly embarrassed and said "I try not to look at beautiful girls on the street and try to forget them before coming here, but then I see beautiful girls in the temple too. I try to achieve piece of mind when I go to temple." Similarly, Shalom, 62 told me: "I cannot help but to look at beautiful women sometimes during the worship, especially women's beautiful eyes." Therefore, it seems that thinking about women is considered polluting, because it distracts men's thoughts from thinking about God. To confirm this assumption, Dilip, 23 mentioned "Usually men do not sit next to the opposite sex, as women would distract you if they were wearing beautiful clothes or were pretty." On the other hand women may find men distracting as well, as Pramod, 21 noted "perhaps women feel more comfortable when they do not sit next to men." A retired Indian woman stated, "We do not want men grabbing or touching the women." However, many women said that they would not mind mixing the sexes. Moreover, there are differences according to public and a private space, as Maya, 33 emphasizes, "our religion does not say to separate the sexes. God says a woman and a man are two halves of a whole. When you perform puja at home there is no separation, you do it next to your husband."
On one hand women make an effort to look beautiful before visiting the temple, but on the other hand there is a feeling that women should not be visible. This is an interesting contradiction. As I asked Uma whether she ever rings the bell, when she enters the worshipping area, she said to me: " Oh no, I do not do that, because then everybody would definitely look at me." It was normally men, who rang the bell.
It is not enough just to look at gender issues in terms of men and women, because there are more complex relationships in play, which affect the person's status position. As we have seen, old women have a lot of respect and power and young women can be seen in some sense subordinate to them. The differentiation by gender is also linked to differentiation by caste and there are no clearly separable distinctions between these categories (Killingley, 2003).
Hindu Mandir - The building itself.
Interview with the vice president of the temple committee:
Why was this particular building chosen to be the temple? Did you have any alternatives?
"Good question...I suppose this building has got prestige, as it is old and beautiful. We wanted something central and we needed a building with a lot of space. We had to take what was available, because we cannot afford to buy land and build a temple. At the moment we don't have enough space in here. It gets very crowded. There is a bigger space upstairs, which we want to make into a worshipping area instead, but we do not have the money yet. I would like to have big sculptors of deities. We need more funding somehow." She was hoping that we could do research on the financing issues and help them to receive funding through our report.
We were curious to know what the members of Hindu Mandir thought about the space. Were they satisfied with it? Is the appearance of the temple important and does it have an affect on the experience of the worship? Is the feeling and experience different in Glasgow than in India?
Many people emphasized that God is everywhere and that even though there is a specific way to build a temple it cannot be followed here and thus it does not matter. Many people said that the experience or feeling is the same regardless of the place where the worship takes place. Manoj, 44 said: "The place is not important. The gods, spirituality is always inside you no matter where you are." However, there was no clear pattern in the responses, as other people disagreed and said that the appearance of the temple is highly important. Ravi, 22 feels that Hindu Mandir "is artificial." Another young man, Varma, 22 said: "This is not a proper temple. You need to be able to see from the outside that it is a temple." Panjabi, 33 said, "I would like the temple to be more like ones in India so that my children could relate to the Indian temples. At the moment going to the temple is like going to a house. This temple is better than nothing, but I would like a purposefully built building, with different building the atmosphere would be different." Many people mentioned the need for bigger space. Hari, 49 mentioned, "There is quite a bit of conflict about the worshipping area. Many people think it should be upstairs, because there is more space, but I do not take part into these arguments. I try to stay away from that."
Identity and belonging
When people migrate the speed of social and cultural change can be high, but nevertheless, people tend to retain their ethnic identity within the new environment (Eriksen, 1993). When asking about the reasons why people visit the temple, most of the people said that the main reason is to pray, but they also find it important to socialize and meet friends. Thus, Hindu Mandir is a crucial focal point for the immigrants in terms of maintaining their ethnic identity and keeping their cultural traditions alive. Hindu Mandir offers a sense of belonging to its members, as visiting the temple helps Hindus to create social networks with other Hindus in the new Glasgow context.
Furthermore, instead of having just regular members from a close community, Hindu Mandir is visited by people from a very wide area. One woman flew all the way from London, just for one day, to meet her friends in Hindu Mandir. Many people who we spoke to had just recently moved to Glasgow, and thus had visited Hindu Mandir only few times. Raju, 26 was visiting Hindu Mandir for the first time, and he had moved to Glasgow from India only three days earlier. Thus, it seems, that people find their way to the temple very quickly after arriving to Scotland, and Hindu Mandir is like a key to the new environment, as through meeting other Hindus, it is easier to orientate to the community and settle down in the new place.
Generally people tend to visit the temple once or twice a month, but many people come every Sunday.
Many women also mentioned that they started to visit Hindu Mandir more frequently after having children, so that their children "know what they belong to" and so that they can "identify with Indian culture". Nanda, 43 is actively involved in the Hindu community, as she organizes the Hindu youth group within the temple. Nanda was born in Britain and she says: "Coming to the temple is a learning experience for me, because I have lived in Britain all my life. I am still learning rituals as I go along. I learn something new every week." Nanda considers herself as an Asian in addition to being British. These comments highlight the same point what Glazer & Moynihan (1963) made when they noted that the "American melting-pot", in which immigrants would adopt the new host culture, never occurred, but "rather than eradicating ethnic differences"..immigration "has actually created a new awareness in people, a concern about roots and origins" (cited in Eriksen, 1993). We may cite Clifford Geerzt by saying that when people visit Hindu Mandir it is 'a story they tell themselves about themselves (1973: 448): Hindus go to the temple to tell themselves who they are and to find meaning in their lives (Geerzt, 1973: cited in Tobin, 2003). Geertz argues that "making and finding meaning is what humans do." (Geerzt, 1973: cited in Tobin, 2003: 9). However, there is a true concern among the Indian mothers of not being able to pass their cultural heritage on to their children when raising them in Britain. Sunita, 38 said that she would never wear Western clothes in the temple, and then she nudges jokingly one of her daughters who is wearing jeans and t-shirt. Her daughter then looks somewhat embarrassed and says that she sometimes dresses up for the temple visit. Similarly when Sunita mentions that she is vegetarian, both of her daughters start to giggle, as they do not follow the eating rules.
It is mainly Northern Indian traditions, which are adopted and carried out within the Hindu Mandir temple. Since there is a lot of variation in the traditions even within India, and the members of Hindu Mandir form a multi-cultural population, their past experiences of traditions and worshipping are heterogeneous. Uma, 21 is from Malaysia and she says: "Here they pray more in North Indian style. My style is more Southern. I am not experienced with singing and sitting down." Uma explains to me the differences in worshipping styles and she wishes that "they had vibutni here. It is applied on your forehead so that you have something with you from the temple and then other people can see that you have been in a temple." Varma, 22 says "the feeling is different in South India, because they use more incense and stuff in the worship." The lunch or prasada is also a tradition adopted from North India and food is not served in temples in Southern India. The food is served in North Indian temples to help underprivileged people for charity purposes. For this reason people were sometimes uncomfortable about eating in the temple and emphasized that no one in Hindu Mandir is underprivileged. They were often joking about just coming to the temple to get free lunch. When I asked Uma if it feels different to eat lunch in the temple from eating lunch elsewhere, and whether she thinks that the food is blessed, she started to laugh and said:" The food is not blessed. It is just food." In this way different people have different experiences and different points of significance within Hindu Mandir, and these experiences are related to the degree of familiarity and ability to identify with the traditions. Moreover, the sense of belonging to a group or the sense of sharing common ethnic identity with a group is very much linked to sharing the same language with the group (Carro-Ripalda, 2004). Uma says that " The feeling in Hindu Mandir is different and the language is different. I do not feel like I completely belong here, because I do not talk Hindi. But in Glasgow is good to meet people in the temple. It is like a gathering." Uma has moved to Glasgow recently and it would be interesting to know if her experiences during the worship will change over time, when she becomes more familiar with the traditions within Hindu Mandir. Hinduism is a very flexible religion. In general, many people did not know the underlying meanings of ritual symbols, or they had given personal meanings for them.
This flexibility of Hinduism seems to help to resolve the potential theological issues, which may rise when establishing Hindu temples around the world. In India, there are different temples for different gods (Pechilis, et al., 2001). Since there is only one temple in Glasgow, many gods must be placed under the same roof. Moreover, different people favour different gods and the god one person prefers may not be worshipped in the Hindu Mandir temple. We asked whether people find these issues problematic? Uma says to me: "My family in Malaysia prefers praying one particular sculpture, but I do not really know if it is problematic." Raju, 26 gave me the following response: "Very good question"...He takes a long time to think about his answer and replies to me: "There is only one God. It does not matter which gods you pray, because which ever god you make the request it finally goes to the one God." However, as I asked the Hindu monk who I met on the street this same question, he replied to me: " Hindu Mandir is like a melting pot of all religious traditions." He sounded negative as he said this and continued: "You cannot just throw everything into a pot and stir it. In the temple where we monks live, we just recite the old Veda books. We want to keep the religion pure and simple."
Conclusion
"A visit to Hindu Mandir provides a religious, cultural and social experience in one package." concludes Sushila, 43 conveniently. Hindu worship is a more individual experience, where as the lunch after the pray fills the social aspect of the temple visit. We have seen that Hindu Mandir plays a highly crucial role in maintaining Hindu identity and traditions alive in Glasgow context. We have also seen that people have had to make many theological compromises in their minds in terms of the appearance of the temple and the rituals, which are performed within the temple. For some people this compromising seems to have been easier than for others, but the flexibility of Hinduism allows this adaptability of the religion.
Even though Hindu Mandir offers a sense of belonging to a Hindu community for its members, it seems that it cannot never completely recreate the feeling of India or home (Caswell, 1996). Raju, 26 emphasizes that "there can never be a substitute for India." Mothers often felt that Hindu Mandir does not provide effective enough means to teach the true Indian traditions to their children. There was a concern that British born generations will assimilate to British culture. Will the second-generation look at India less as home and will their cultural identity be more connected to Hindu Mandir temple itself than to the Indian subcontinent (Caswell, 1996)? Only time will tell the answer to that question, but at the moment it seems that Hindu identity and Indian culture in Glasgow context are anything but disappearing and the vibrant Hindu Mandir temple is a living proof of the vitality of Hindu traditions.
Issues concerning financial problems within the Hindu Mandir temple were rather frequently mentioned. In parallel with Caswell's (1996) findings, we also met people in the Hindu Mandir who were unsatisfied with the inner politics of Hindu Mandir in terms of status and class differences, suggesting that the profile of the temple committee members may not be representative of the Indian population in Glasgow. It would be interesting to carry out research by comparing the degree of satisfaction with service of Hindu Mandir among working class people and among the wealthier people. Moreover, if differences between these two groups would be found, it would be interesting to see how these conflicts would be aimed to be resolved, since there is only one Hindu temple in Glasgow.
It would also be interesting to further investigate the issue of cultural continuity among the British born generations by inquiring their feelings and thoughts about retaining their sense of Hindu identity.
While doing our research I realized the importance of staying in the field for a long period of time in order to obtain more in depth and reliable information about the subjects. Looking back on our fieldwork, there are few things that I would now do differently. First of all, I wish we had spent more time in the field, as we gathered data for a rather short period of time. We were just becoming more familiar with the place and starting to reveal many interesting issues within the Hindu Mandir when our fieldwork period ended. Secondly, the fact that the interview questions were previously planned actually restricted the creativity of our results, as well as the quality of the information we gained. Unfortunately, we often blindly followed the previously planned structure of the interview instead of really elaborating the answers we were given and allowing those answers lead the direction of the conversation. It was very good to some extent that we had planned questions of interest earlier, but we should have allowed the interviews to be more free floating rather than just firing our own questions one after another. By doing that mistake, we may have missed some interesting findings.
During the fieldwork process I sometimes felt like a child who is learning to speak. When children learn a language they first enter the stage of asking endless amount of "what is that?" questions. In this way children obtain vocabulary, which then allows children to proceed to the "why?" stage. Children connect the underlying patterns of meanings in their environment through responding to any sentence with another "but why?" question, and in this way children learn to understand their own culture. Similarly I first obtained the knowledge about the names of objects and rituals in the new environment through "what?" questions, after which I was ready to 'hunt' people with my exhaustive lists of "why?" questions, in order to reveal meaning in the environment. The experience of doing fieldwork was very inspiring; as doing research was not anymore just about reading theoretical literature, but all the theory became alive once you start looking for patterns in the observed environment